As I’ve mentioned a couple of time, I have a season pass to Marineland and have already been a few times this year. The last couple of times that I’ve gone I’ve spent a lot of time in Friendship Cove to watch the Orca (killer) whales. Before Friendship Cove was finished a few years ago, the whales were in much smaller tanks in King Waldorf’s stadium. They would perform shows in the stadium several times a day, including having someone riding on them. Whether it was pressure from activist groups, or another reason, these sorts of performances have stopped. Friendship Cove is gigantic compared to where they used to live, so there is a lot more room for them to swim around. The only performances now are “splash shows” where the whales do a few tricks like jumping out of the water, splashing people watching with their tail, etc. There are only 4 or 5 performances during the day, and they last about 15 minutes.
I’ve taken quite a few pictures and put them in the Summer 2007 Orca Whale Splash Show gallery. The thumbnails below are a sample of the pictures. You can see more thumbnails and the larger versions of all the pictures in the gallery.
I’ve also put together a 4:30 video of the splash show.
Related posts
- Marineland in Summer 2008...
- Marineland’s King Waldorf Stadium...
- Marineland rides photo gallery...
- Trip to Marineland Canada - The Marine Animals...
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I jsut wanted to let you know that there are several reasons for there not being a show in King Waldowrfs the first being it is now sowly the home in the main tansk of Dolphins becasue at the Aqarium Dome the Harbor Seals who were rescued moved in the other reason is that the show that used to go on there at the end was only preformed by one whale Neocia who passed away in 2004 she was the only orca trained for shows like her’s the other orcas did not recive any training at King Waldowrfs for major shows and the baby is the procsses of being trained accoring to Ann Marie Roddenieli “we currently have no plasn for a orca show in the near futre when our baby is fulltrained and mature and there is sufficent room we will agian have orca shows at King Waldorfs Stadium”
Now that Friendship Cove is open, there will never be another whale show again in King Waldorf’s stadium. The whales are in an entirely different area of the park so it wouldn’t be feasible to move them back and forth, and I don’t think they’d take one or two whales and move them into the smaller tank at the stadium. If they do a show, they’d do it at Friendship Cove. There’s lots of land there where they could build some seating if they felt they needed to.
Also, there were 2 orcas that performed in the show. Neocia may have been one, but there was a second one that performed as well.
I mentioned previously that the younger whales were being trained.
I know there is lots of land at Friendship cove during buling I thought what I saw to be seating but it was only the concrete structure for the greenery around the cove my intitial reaction to the cove was wow byut this was during construction I did think that the orcas would preform there shows there instead but alas for 4 years shows did continue to go in the King Waldorwfs consisting of Orcas yes there was 2 at one point and even a baby but once friendship cove opened some were moved Neocia remained with one other but the other was gone one year too leaving only Neocia for the last year. I did ask who would take the place of Neoica and Ann Marie said that there will be splash seesions for now and that the baby is in training for shows in the future so I think maybe once the Aqarium Complex is done if ever the Dolphins to there new home and the Orcas may agian preform there. But I agree they should have seating built at Friendship cove and they should have big hows they have a platform in the water for that why not use it!